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How music got free
Stephen Witt
2015, 296 pages
Nonfiction
When is the last time that you bought a CD? I’m not talking about an album of music on iTunes, but an actual physical CD, purchased in a store.
If you’re like me, it was a very long time ago. Even if you don’t pirate music (which many people did, including author Stephen Witt), it’s easy to buy just the song you want online, instead of driving to the store and buying a physical disc.
How music got free is a history of how this process became possible. This book is not an exhaustive history of internet piracy. Witt focuses specifically on three subjects: the German scientists who invented the mp3, the factory worker who leaked nearly 2,000 albums to the internet over 10 years and the music executive who defined pop music for 50 years.
Witt shows how the invention of the mp3 made digital piracy possible. Once the content was divorced from the physical format and coded into 0’s and 1’s, it was possible for a factory worker to steal 1 CD, upload it to the internet, and have millions of users download it. Witt also discusses how the music industry responded, suing individual downloaders and trying to track down the real hub of internet pirates. The central premise of the book goes unanswered: how could an entire generation have seen piracy as an acceptable activity? Even with lawsuits, fines and punitive measures, why did people collect illegal music?
Although he hints at answers (the physical cost of CDs, the availability of digital music, the low chance of punishment and the urge to collect are mentioned) Witt doesn’t really answer this question, which weakens the book. He also touches on but doesn’t examine the generational divide between the pirates and the current generation who (at least in my experience) watch music and videos on streaming services but often don’t keep copies. These points kept me from fully enjoying the book, which is otherwise well-written with an opinionated, distinctive voice.
Nora Cascadden
Concord Public Library
